The world’s Amphibians are in the grips of the worst extinction crisis this planet has seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out. It's a catastrophe that will reverberate through the entire web of life yet it fails to grab headlines like pandas or polar bears. This blog is dedicated to the ugly, the freakish and the unloved animals that are perilously ignored thanks to the tyranny of cute.

nature

08/05/2012

Sid the baby pangolin sucks down his special smoothie of termites and milk

As you know I'm not prone to cooing over cute but if I were this would be my number one squee: Sid, a baby pangolin. Most of you may have never heard of a pangolin before, and if you have you probably thought it was some sort of medieval musical instrument. But it is in fact an extremely shy anteater from Africa and Asia whose name comes from the Malay word 'pengulling' which means 'something that rolls up'. When under attack this walking pine cone curls himself into a tight ball, protecting his soft underbelly with his scaly razor-sharp armour.

The closest I get to cooing over a cutie: Lucy and Louise fuss over little Sid

Fortunately Sid and his mother were rescued by Louise Joubert who promptly released them. But Sid's mom, no doubt suffering extreme stress, went on to reject her month old baby so now Louise is Sid's surrogate mom. Not being a pangolin herself, Louise has had a steep learning curve on how to care for these enigmatic creatures that's led to some highly inventive solutions. Her first mission was how to keep Sid calm and warm. She'd seen baby pangolins cling to their mom's back in the first few months of their life so Louise created a somewhat fluffier facsimile: a hot water bottle stuffed inside a teddy bear. Fortunately Sid immediately took to snuggling up against his toastie teddy and began to cheer upconsiderably.

This is what a happy baby pangolin looks like

Next step is what to feed him. Adult pangolins have no teeth but an extremely long tongue that's stickier than a cinema carpet which they use to hoover up thousands of termites every day. So for baby Sid, Louise headed to her kitchen where she conjured up a very special smoothie: milk with a sprinkling of termites whizzed up in the blender.

When I arrived for filming, Louise decided it was time to give Sid his first taste of live termite. We drove out into the bush and located a massive termite mound and it was my job to break it open and get the bugs. But termite mounds are tough as concrete, which goes to show how strong pangolin claws are, and in the process of trying to crack it open I smacked myself in the nose with the pick axe. Ouch. After considerable effort I managed to release a single termite but Sid was more interested in cuddling up on his teddy than eating it.

This is what a happy pangolin fan looks like, even after a fight with a pick axe

Louise tells me that a few months later Sid did catch and eat his first termite and is due to be released back into the wild later this year at a secret location. Fingers crossed he manages to stay hidden this time around as his species is in danger of becoming extinct in the next ten years if the poaching doesn't stop. The world would be a poorer place without this magical creature that looks more like an extra from Star Wars than a mammal from the African Bush.

From Louise's sofa....

...to the wild. Sid has had a most peculiar journey for a pangolin

Meet Sid in 'Freaks and Creeps: The Freaky Five' on Tuesday July 31st at 10pm and repeated on Saturday August 4th at 10pm, Monday 6th at 10pm, Tuesday 7th at 1pm and Saturday 11th at 10pm on National Geographic Wild

05/16/2012

I donated my poo to science today. Not something I thought I’d ever say but I’m helping a Peruvian entomologist further her dung beetle studies and she needed volunteers.

Apparently it’s not easy to find people prepared to crap for conservation. The sad thing is, my act of charity only enticed a paltry half dozen nondescript brown beetles whereas Sarah, the entomologist, has ensnared a healthy sampling of the hundred or so species that inhabit the Amazon basin, including some rather splendid metallic blue ones the size of a conker. We suspect my coffee addiction is to blame for rendering my personal refuse repulsive to the resident beetles, so I am going to have to forgo my morning ritual for the next day and repeat the experiment all over again. Science can be brutal.

Poo pot results. Mine is on the left. It's like the difference between a gourmet gumbo and a cup a soup in terms of protein.

My involvement with dung beetle studies is a new path for me. Until recently I had a different kind of shit job. The regular kind; where you work too hard to pay your mortgage and dream of doing something different. Then came the credit crunch and I decided to escape the second winter of discontent by leaving my job with a nest egg just big enough to live a modest life in South America, without having to rob a bank.

The latest leg of my journey has led me to the Los Amigos scientific research centre deep in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, where, as a filmmaker, I’ve taken up the position of artist in residence. This tropical rainforest lays claim to being the most bio-diverse on the planet and the remote field station I now call home attracts biologists from all around the world to come and study the exceptional flora and fauna. It’s my job to study them with my camera and document their work. In my spare time I can indulge my amphibian obsession by combing the forest for freaky frogs.

The super freaky Ceratophrys - the frog that bites. Hard.

The research station is a strange place – a remote academic island in a vast green sea. With no phone and an antique internet connection, we’re divorced from conventional reality. We live in a bubble, which gets more than a bit Big Brother-like at times. Today is Sunday and I’m doing a dung beetle experiment but it could be any of day of the week. There is no such thing as a weekend – just sunny (work) days and rainy (rest) days. But the best thing is that, unlike my life in London, no two days are ever the same.

Monday morning starts with my alarm going off at 4.30am to join the tamarin team, tracking monkeys for the day. Like most people here I have surrendered to the rhythm of the jungle, waking before dawn and falling asleep not long after the sun goes down. I pull on a pair of wet socks (nothing dries in the rainy season and dry socks are a well worn fantasy) and my uniform of functional field clothes and Wellington boots. There is something very democratic about our jungle existence.We all wear the same dowdy clothes and we all smell of the same heady cocktail of mould and bug spray.

Me and Alison rocking the jungle look

Silently we trek through the jungle pre-dawn to get to the tamarin’s sleeping tree before they wake up and disappear into the jungle. Through the gloom, we peer into the canopy waiting for the first signs of life. Tamarin monkey’s morning routine is not so different from ours - a bathroom break followed by food. We watch with great interest where these morning bowel movements land and scramble through the undergrowth to collect them. No, it’s not for another dung beetle experiment, its for the tamarin team’s research. This isn’t just poo, it’s important data which reveals a wealth of genetic and behavioural information about these monkeys.

Field researcher Rhea poses precariously close to our faecal quarry

Collecting crap is actually the easy part of the job. The hard bit is following the monkeys as they travel at speed along their treetop superhighway. This involves us, lumbering ground level apes, battling though seemingly impenetrable bamboo thickets and racing up and down steep ravines to keep up with their lofty antics. It’s a serious workout made harder still by having to keep one eye on the canopy at all times so as not to lose the group of tiny brown acrobats, 40 feet in the air and each no bigger than one of Paris Hilton’s pet dogs. They don’t seem to mind being followed. At times they venture down to eye level, to stare you out before disappearing up a massive tree to gorge themselves on yet more exotic Amazonian fruits and presumably laugh about how stupid we look trying to follow them.

Me and a precious vial of monkey data

For the tamarin team, with all that staring up, chronic neck ache is an occupational hazard. Along with insect bites. The worst of which is the legendary bullet ant, so called because its sting is said to be as painful as being shot. These inch long monsters hang out on the undergrowth ready to bite unsuspecting field researchers as the blindly push their way through the thicket. Getting stung by one is inevitable and something of a right of passage. My first one came from an ant that fell out of a tree and into my shirt, which led to a severely swollen right breast and 24 hours of nausea and a migraine-like headache. Much like losing your virginity, you never forget your first bullet ant.

Super close up of a bullet ant I found online. A face only a mother could love.

Fortunately monkeys go to bed quite early and generally like to be back in their sleep tree around 4.30pm. This means that after almost twelve hours being led a merry dance around the jungle by a pack of cheeky monkeys, our fieldwork is also finally over. We head back to the lab exhausted, bearing our battle scars of cuts, bruises, bites and stings to put the day’s monkey poo booty on ice.

That's the skin of an anaconda clearly big enough to eat me

More often than not someone will have brought something curious back from the field, to be categorised and photographed - a crazy looking caterpillar, anonymous lizard or sci-fi beetle. This is one of the joys of living amongst a bunch of zoology geeks. Everyone here is as obsessed with nature as I am and happy to share their encyclopaedic knowledge of the jungle – it’s like living in an Attenborough documentary. Only itchier.

The geeks gather around an absurd caterpillar. Yes Sarah does have a monkey on her head.

We eat dinner early, just as the sun has gone down. This is the one meal of the day where all the field researchers get together to discuss the events of the day. Conversational hors d’Oeuvres generally centre around comparison of the day’s chigger bites – tiny blood sucking mites that embed themselves in your skin and itch like crazy for days - before the main course of the days triumphs and frustrations. It’s a tough life being a field scientist, and I have a newfound admiration for them. Uncovering the smallest titbit of information about an animal’s behaviour is fraught with trial and error. The jungle rarely behaves itself and does not give up its secrets easily.

Me enjoying a rare cold beer at a bar in Boca Amigos, unaware of the thirsty-looking lady behind me. I thought the guys were looking at me.

In England my evening routine generally involved getting drunk with my mates in various different dingy London locations. The only bar around here is 30 minutes downriver at the nearby mining settlement of Boca Amigos, and it’s not a place you want to hang out at night. There is gold in the Madre de Dios river, which is mined, largely illegally, by small time prospectors who come down from the Andes. There are tiny ephemeral mining communities dotted all along the river, although Boca, with five permanent families is one of the more established. With more bars than houses, it has a distinctly wild west feel. The one shop on the muddy high street sells a motley selection of necessities including canned foods, rubber boots, bug spray and pregnancy tests.

The mercury the miners use has become a pressing environmental issue. The trouble with this heavy metal is that its concentration increases up the food chain. One of the scientists at the station has been studying mercury levels in raptors and discovered levels high enough to impair reproduction. The forest here may look pristine but the blood and feathers of the birds of prey here reveal a more worrying story.

Peggy and Rene and one of their raptors

After dinner there is generally another team heading out to study the jungle at night. Tonight I’m joining a group to trap bats. It’s also the first outing into the field for the baby owl monkey that arrived at the station a few nights back. It was found half dead, by one of the station’s staff and immediately brought to the lab. Strictly speaking it should have been left there, it is strict policy here not to interfere with nature. But you would have to have a heart of stone to send this wide-eyed and whimpering baby back to the jungle to die alone in the dark. After an emergency operation to patch up his lacerated leg he now lives on one of the field researchers heads. The monkey is getting better by the day whilst the field researcher gets to grips with the trials of this unexpected motherhood – sleepless nights, potty training (essential for a baby that inhabits your hair) and loss of identity (she is now a platform for this much coo-ed over and unbearably cute newcomer).

Mookie steals another heart

The jungle at night showcases an alternate cast of animal life. The beam of your head torch reveals the sparkling eyes of giant spiders, crooning frogs and predatory snakes. We’re catching the bats using large mist nets which we check every half an hour, in between telling ghost stories and swatting the thick mist of mosquitoes. There are dozens of species of bat here and over the course of the night we trap six of them from a tiny insectivorous one to a giant fruit eating false vampire. But the prize of the night, which makes Adrian, the station’s resident batman, quiver with excitement is a medium sized leaf-nosed bat.

Me and a bat with an overly large appendage. Could I be grinning any harder?

I have never been particularly enamoured by bats but Adrian’s enthusiasm, like that of all the field scientists, is infectious. This specimen it turns out is the Dirk Diggler of bats, endowed with an oversized appendage in order to ensure his sperm’s success in impregnating the highly promiscuous females of the species. He carefully places the bat in a cloth bag in the hope that it will deliver that all-important faecal gift that will help Adrian unravel some of its secrets.

We are lucky, the bat delivers and triumphant we head back to the research station for bed. Tomorrow will be round two of the dung beetle experiment and a totally different and equally unpredictable set of scatological adventures. I can’t wait.

I know this isn't just about frogs but...I wrote this article for the Telegraph newspaper recently and you can find it online if you are lurking in that area. However it occurred to me that if you aren't a Tory voting expat you may never get to read it. So here it is, my poo-y adventure with bonus extra photos not seen in the Telegraph edition. And swear words too. The Telegraph doesn't mind poo but won't tolerate shit. Apparently.

By the way if you like this kind of crap humour then you should check out my friend Marcus's very funny blog - The Lavatory Reader

05/09/2012

Living doll - if cute could kill, the sloths at the Aviaros del Caribe orphanage would make a formidable army

I’ve travelled thousands of miles to meet an animal I first saw on youtube. I’m not generally a fan of cute LOL viral funnies but Taz, a very itchy baby sloth, was different. She looked like a miniature hairy Yoda and possessed Jedi-strength comic powers, reducing the grown men who made the video to giggling fools (their helpless laughter is almost as funny as the scratchy sloth - watch below).

A bit of googling revealed a secret subculture of silly sloth videos, all filmed at the world's only sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, which just happened to be looking for volunteers. I had to go.

Much like junkies, baby sloths spend most of their time nodding off or scratching but would never steal your wallet

I've always been a fan of sloths. They're wonderfully freaky, yet perfectly adapted to their slow arboreal lifestyle. Impressively camouflaged courtesy of their mottled green fur - a miniature eco-system which harbours two species of algae, numerous insects and a moth which refuses to live anywhere else. Their nerves have even evolved to react slower so they don't flinch at loud noises - there's no point saying boo to a sloth - surely making them nature's most chilled-out animals.

Boo! Blame it on the metabolism...two thirds of a sloth's body weight can be taken up by it's stomach contents which take up to a month to digest.

They have very few natural predators and the only time they're vulnerable is when they leave the trees once a week and descend to the ground to poo. This behaviour has befuddled scientists for many years. One of the theories is that their solitary lifestyle affords few chances to hook up with the opposite sex and these toilet stops are a good way to meet other sloths. Very George Michael.

Why did the sloth cross the road? To escape the stupid American tourist with the video camera, who went on to post this tragi-comedy video of a sloth learning the highway code the hard way. Why they didn't put down the camera and help the poor animal is a mystery.

But evolution didn't prepare sloths for the power lines and roads which now crisscross Costa Rica's jungles. Individuals that have been zapped by electricity or run over, wind up here at the Aviaros del Caribe sanctuary where they're cared for by the legendary sloth whisperer Judy Arroyo and her staff.

Sloths sleep up to 18 hours a day

The sloths at the sanctuary don't disappoint and are just as adorable as the video suggests. There are two species here: the two-toed sloths are the ones that look like the result of a crazy hybridisation experiment between a wookie and and a pig, and the three-toed which have the medieval haircut and enigmatic smile.

Three-toed sloth

Two-toed sloth

Regular readers will wonder what I'm doing writing about a sloth sanctuary - this blog is about my adventures in Latin America, trying to find out how to save the world's amphibians. Well, I've realised that frogs have a bit of PR problem and are not as popular as they deserve to be given how diverse, funny and amazing they are. So I've decided to pimp out the sloths to try and save the frogs.

This little guy I found in Peru is easily as cute as a baby sloth and so much more in need of your love

Such is the viral power of the baby sloth, I decided to make my own super cute sloth video to lure people to my blog to discover how cute frogs are and how much they need our help. I released it a few days ago and sure enough it's gone viral. Here is my video - "Meet the sloths":

So for all the LOL baby sloth fans that have read this far - take a moment to think about the frogs. These cuddly sloths are not an endangered species but the world's frogs are dying out at an alarming rate. Like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie, forty percent are going extinct thanks to a deadly fungus that's sweeping the planet. It's the biggest extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet but not enough people care as it involves amphibians and not LOL furry cuties like sloths or pandas. You can change that.

The Costa Rican red-eyed tree frog is being killed by a deadly fungus

So stay tuned to this site, spread the word and let's make the frog's go viral for a change. If you really want to help then you could even make a tiny donation. In return I promise to deliver more baby sloth cute crack to feed your addiction.

It is exhausting being so sweet

There are many things that can be done to help the frogs without having to open your purse.

1 Don't use pesticides and buy organic. Amphibians are very sensitive to pollution as they breathe through their skin. Atrazine in particular (the world's commonest weedkiller) is doing a top job of damaging frog populations world wide.

04/26/2012

I’ve just had my heart stolen by a very slippery customer. At little more than two inches long and disguised as a monkey poo I’ll admit he’s not your regular Romeo. But looks can be deceiving.

He’s a Bolitoglossa salamander – the first I’ve ever seen in the flesh. I found him hanging about in a Bromeliad in the magical mist-soaked forests of Colombia’s Sierra Nevada mountain. What I love about him, apart from his dear little face with its watery eyes and sad smile, is the fact he is so very, very slow. I have a weakness for nature’s slowcoaches but Mr Bolitoglossa here takes the biscuit. Or at least he would if he could reach it in time. He’s a serious contender for the slowest animal on earth. Check out the video below featuring an amorous male making his move on a lady (best watched while listening to Prince’s 'Slow love').

Let's make it last all night, baby. Literally

Some may be inclined to mock the romantic credentials of a plodding poop lookalike but not everything about this salamander is slack. Bolitoglossa is Greek for bullet tongue - evolution has equipped Mr B with a spring-loaded licker that can extend more than half his body length in about 7 milliseconds. That's 1/50th the blink of an eye which means he could stick his tongue out at you and you'd never even notice. Scientists measuring Mr B’s tongue thrusts deemed it 'the most explosive muscle in nature' - a positively pornographic title. Who’s laughing now? Mrs B I'd imagine.

He may look innocent but Mr B is a stealth Ninja

With his cloak of invisibility, sly moves and sticky bullet tongue Mr B is one of nature’s most accomplished stealth Ninja’s. He's even capable of creeping up on a cricket - a distinctly flighty customer with an almost supernatural ability to spot a potential stalker thanks to microscopic hair-like sensors capable of detecting movement from minute changes in air pressure. It may not be as glamorous as cheetah's chasing wildebeest on the Serengheti but in the evolutionary arms race between predator and prey the Bolitoglossa have been remarkably successful, evolving into over 100 different species.

The El Dorado reserve in Colombia's Sierra Nevada Mountains is an enviable home indeed

But global warming is changing all that. As lungless salamanders these amphibians need moist conditions so they can breathe through their skin, which is why they like to live in cool damp cloud forests on tropical mountains in Central and South America. But climate change is forcing them higher and higher up the slopes and the rapidly looming crisis is that once they reach the top, there will be nowhere left for them to go.

The Giant Chinese Salamander's neighbour, the Giant Panda, has no such problem with even the most dubious conservation efforts attracting millions of precious conservation dollars. But the image of brand Panda is that of a cute, harmless bear whilst the salamander is considered something of a slippery monster. But as we've seen with the peculiarly cunning Mr B, you can't judge a book by its cover. Check out this rare footage of a wild panda chowing down on a dead deer. Panda eats Bambi - who's cute now?

If you think it's time the salamander got a bit of cash and attention then Pro Aves are a Colombian conservation organisation working hard to protect the Bolitoglossa salamander's home, a biodiversity hotspot home to hundreds of endemic species of bird, amphibian and mammal. To support them you can donate here or pay a visit to the spectacularly beautiful El Dorado reserve in the Sierra Nevada mountains with genuine eco-tourism outfit Eco-turs.

04/26/2011

My most exotic adventure yet: to the end of the Piccadilly line to help a toad get laid. Not personally, of course. Despite the learing grin.

It's a chilly February afternoon when I get the text.

"The toads are on the move"

Enigmatic it may be, but like some sort of amphibian secret agent I know exactly what it means. Along with a handful of other people across London I've been waiting for this missive for several weeks. The time has come for us to mobilise and put our training into practise. In a single message my Saturday night has morphed from a date with a nice chap in a cosy restaurant to one with a bewildered toad on a road in Cockfosters.

Who knew the British equivalent of the great Wildebeest migration across the Maasai Mara happens at the end of the Piccadilly line? But apparently it does. As soon as the thermometer strays above 5 degrees the toads of Trent park wake up, yawn and start thinking about sex. It’s time for them to make the mile long pilgrimage from their winter woodland hideaway to their ancestral pond. This they do en masse along an ancient migratory route; one that they've been following since before Henry IV first declared the park a Royal hunting ground back in the fifteenth century. Upon arrival the fun really begins. The Trent park toads are the ultimate suburban swingers and and embark upon the kind of orgy that would make even Charlie Sheen blush.

Toads are very fussy about where they breed. But this nondescript patch of water in North London is the equivalent of the Playboy mansion for the local toads and worth risking roads to get to.

It's a treacherous journey. Over the centuries the randy toads have had to dodge not just the pounding of Royal horses hooves but the boots of German officers interned in the park during its brief spell as an open prison during WWII. And now cars. An estimated 20 tonnes of toads get squished every year on Britain's roads making the location of the A111 beside the toad’s ancestral pond more of a menace than goose-stepping Nazis. Which is where I come in. I'm the latest volunteer for the local toad patrol and it's my job to ensure the Trent park toads get past the cars and get laid. Their future depends on it.

Andy has been watching toads copulate for almost twenty years

I'm excited about the prospect of witnessing such a spectacle. Although somewhat nervous about creeping around a park after dark. I'm loitering self-consciously at the entrance, scanning the road for toads when, thankfully, Andy arrives. Andy's been watching the Trent park toads for almost two decades. Worryingly he tells me the last few years haven't yielded the usual bumper crop.

"It used to be like an ocean of toads. So many you'd be scared to move for fear of treading on them. I had to have a word with the local running club. On the 'night of the toads' as I call it, they were trampling them to death"

We patrol the length of the road a few times. Nothing. Have the toads all fallen foul of jogging feet and speeding wheels? Thankfully Andy thinks it's nothing that sinister, just a bit too cold and dry for them to be feeling fruity just yet.

Then I spot a single male hopping about in the grass. I pick him up and he makes a sweet chirruping sound more like a bird than an amphibian. Toads get a bad rap and are generally associated with myths about warts and witchcraft. But this little guy is an essential link in the foodchain; the gardener's best friend he eats slugs and snails and in turn he provides otters and hedgehogs with a decent meal. It's true they do have certain magical qualities and have been known to predict earthquakes. Which makes them significantly smarter than pandas and far more deserving of our attention in my book.

I pop him down and he plops in the pond. Early to the party, I'm hoping he bags himself a choice female. Or two. One thing's for sure. He needs to father as many tadpoles as possible. It's not just joggers and cars these toads have to worry about. The killer fungal disease, Chytrid, has been detected in amphibian populations all around the UK. With numbers in decline by more than 50% over the last decade, Bufo Bufo, Britain's common toad is in serious danger of needing a new name.

"I'm into hanving sex, not into making love. Come give me a hug", Mr Toad channels 50 cent in order to keep the species going.

03/18/2011

Alonso and I admire a glass frog in the Choco, Colombia where the greatest threat to the astonishing amphibian diversity is peace. Photo by Robin Moore

I’m looking for a lost frog. The Mesopotamian beaked toad to be precise. It’s been missing for almost a hundred years, which some might say is beyond careless. The last person to see it, an American biologist by the name of Gladwyn Noble, was also the first person to discover it. I’m wondering whether the fact it’s been mislaid for so long has anything to do with the curious, frankly misleading, name he gave it. It suggests I should be looking for this amphibian Mr Burns behind a sofa in Turkey as oppose to scrabbling through leaf litter, as I am, in the Colombian jungle.

The reality is this missing toad is just one of thousands of frogs vanishing off the planet. The world’s amphibians are in the grips of the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped out, with over a third of all species heading for the exit sign. In many cases this is happening quite suddenly and mysteriously. The chief suspect is a deadly fungus which is being aided and abetted by the holy trinity of environmental bogeymen: climate change, pollution and habitat loss.

Don't adjust your set: the Colombian rainforest is full of other-worldy amphibians like this purple treefrog with blue eyes

Colombia tops the charts for endangered species. The particular stories behind their disappearances, I’m about to discover, add a surreal twist to the already extraordinary global frog-icide. Our search for the beaked toad uncovers a topsy-turvy world of pharmaceutical frog-nappers, narco-terrorist pseudo-conservationists and German's with frogs up their bums. You couldn't make it up.

My quest begins in Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, where I join a crack team of top international herpetologists, who have been dispatched here to track down the elusive beaked toad, as part of the charity Conservation International’s global search for lost frogs. Over the next few months there will be expeditions in 18 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia to track down one hundred amphibians believed to be missing in action. Many are evolutionary oddities, distinct in their class, like the gastric brooding frog of Australia, which incubates its young in its stomach. Their loss is significant not just to nature but also to science. The hope is that this campaign will uncover secret populations still clinging on in pockets of wilderness that can then be conserved.

‘Colombia is frog central,’ expedition leader Dr Robin Moore tells me. ‘With nearly eight hundred recorded species, it almost certainly has the highest diversity. Brazil officially has a few more but it’s seven times the size of Colombia and more thoroughly surveyed. The exciting thing about this country is that so much of it has yet to be explored’

Glass frog glasses, the latest fashion wow on the herp scene

At this point of the story I should probably come clean. Like the rest of Team Frog I’m also utterly obsessed with amphibians. I love their freaky metamorphic lifestyle; I love their idiosyncratic biology and I love their endless diversity. You can never get bored of frogs. I’m baffled by the tyranny of cute, which sees the so-called charismatic mega-fauna command the lion’s share of attention and conservation dollars. You’ve seen one baby panda, you’ve seen them all. And while the world drools over cuddly furry things a whole class of animals is being erased from the planet, throwing the rest of the food chain into a tailspin. It’s, quite frankly, froggist – and potentially disastrous.

I recently spent six months travelling around Latin America investigating the amphibian declines for a documentary. But I’ve been desperate to visit Colombia as it holds the best opportunity for me to fulfill my life’s ambition, the discovery of a new species. Stuff the Mesopotamian beaked toad, I’m on a secret mission to discover the Lucy frog and achieve amphibian immortality.

All hail the hypno-toad; the New Granda cross banded treefrog has mesmerising qualities

Colombia’s geography reads like a biological explorer’s wish list; Amazon rainforest, tropical islands, vast savannas. It's got the lot. But it’s the tropical Andes that make it such a Darwinian machine - a contender for the most biodiverse place on earth.

Fellow frog hunter Dr Wes Sechrest of Global Wildlife Conservation tells me, ‘Everyone talks about saving the Amazon, which is of course important, but it’s largely homogenous. In terms of biodiversity these equatorial mountains are the real factories of evolution. But very little is being done to conserve them.’

Sunrise over life's most productive factories of evolution

Like islands in the sky, every mountain and valley has evolved its own set of unique species. But much of this biological treasure remains undiscovered. The cloud forests of the Andes have guerrillas in their mist: they are the hiding place for left wing rebel groups like the FARC whose reputation for kidnap, narco-trafficking and mass murder has understandably deterred all but the most dedicated biologists.

Which is why a mission like ours needs a political pilot. Ours is Alonso Quevedo, president of Pro Aves, Colombia’s biggest conservation organisation. He’s a taciturn chap with an arsenal of anecdotes more in keeping with a secret agent than a biologist.

‘To do conservation in this country you have to learn to live with the threat of guerrillas,’ he states matter-of-factly. ‘The FARC often chose to hide out in the thickest forest, so we’re both interested in the same areas’.

Me and the Colombian wing of Team Frog AKA biologists with balls

It clearly takes sizeable cojones to risk fieldwork in this country. A wrong move could cost you your life. Alonso’s colleague Juan had a near death experience whilst trying to protect a rare parrot.

‘These people are very paranoid’ he tells me, ‘They thought I was with the paramilitary so they started shooting at me. My life was randomly saved by a passing friend who confirmed I was a park ranger. Only then did they stop’. I consider my expedition clothes and realise the perils of wearing camo in this country are significantly worse than a dressing down from the fashion police.

Alonso's breakfast. Enough said.

It’s a seven-hour drive along squiggly car advert mountain roads to our final destination, the soggy jungles of Choco - owner of the rare honour of being the wettest place on earth. Here, straddling the equator, the westernmost cordillera of the Andes slides down into the Pacific whose hot damp oceanic air dumps thirteen metres of rain on these steep mountainous slopes every year. The early explorers described it as a Turkish bath. It’s quite literally frog heaven.

I’ve never crossed a meteorological border before. But as we snake our way up the eastern side of the range, the neighbouring province is all sunshine and smiles. A pastoral fantasyland featuring adobe farmhouses draped in geraniums and farmers tending a patchwork of crops. It’s really rather idyllic. But as we cross over the crest of the range, we’re greeted by a wall of rain and two teenage soldiers brandishing submachine guns. Welcome to Choco, a forgotten land of steamy jungles and hot politics.

This is Colombia’s wild west. And that’s saying something. Cut off from the rest of the country by its crazy climate and corrugated terrain, it’s home to a smattering of cowboys, indians and the descendents of African slaves. It is also the scene of some of the country’s most violent standoffs between the FARC and Paramilitary, as they vie for a slice of the countries $13 billion cocaine industry. The lower altitudes are where much of the coca – the raw material for cocaine – is grown and processed, near the coast for easy transportation to neighbouring Panama and beyond. It’s not the sort of place to suddenly start snooping around, even for lost frogs.

The tearing down of the rainforest makes landslides all the more common. You can see why they are pretty deadly.

The dirt road we are bumping along on – incredibly one of the three main arteries feeding the entire province – was until eighteen months ago controlled by the FARC, whose roadblock’s deterred all but the most dedicated traffic. But in the last few years the government has staged a massive crackdown on these left wing rebels, killing several of their key commanders and forcing them back to the furthest corners of the country. Now our progress is slowed by frequent friskings from pimply government soldiers who look too young to hold a machine gun. But their presence makes it finally safe to explore. Alonso thinks we may be the first biologists to visit this jungle in decades making it the perfect place to find out lost toad.

This soldier stumbled out of the jungle and found us sifting through leaf litter. Here Alonso explains to him that although it sounds unlikely we really are here looking for frogs.

The search involves wading up streams, peering under decaying logs and riffling through leaf litter. ‘Watch out for snakes’ Alonso warns breezily. What kind I ask? Fer-de-Lance. Oh. Goody. Only the most deadly viper in Latin America. Its venom is one of those fancy ones that fries your brain and melts your flesh. A sort of serpentine Mike Tyson, the snake is huge and famously aggressive, if mercifully stupid. When chased by a Fer-de-Lance you’re advised to drop your backpack. The snake will then stop and attack that instead of you. A fine idea providing you aren't planning your escape in knee deep mud.

Our first day’s foraging brings no sign of the beaked toad but instead we uncover an Aladdin’s cave of amphibians; delicate glass frogs whose cling-film skin exposes their beating hearts, psychedelic sticky-fingered tree frogs and an undiscovered species of ancient toad that’s matt black with red eyes. The frog geeks are giddy with excitement. Me included.

‘I’ve never found so many species so fast. Let alone just a short walk from the road’ says Robin. ‘Frogs are a great indicator of a healthy ecosystem. The forest here is obviously in great shape’.

So it should be. The very same dangers that kept biologists out of this jungle have also prevented the rest of the world from plundering its riches. Conflict, it turns out, can be the conservationist’s most unlikely friend.

‘It’s the same story in Congo, Laos and Burma. Areas of prolonged civil unrest are home to some of the world’s most intact forest,’ Paul Salaman of the World Land Trust tells me. ‘It’s not PC, but landmines are probably the very best form of conservation there is. A landmine notice keeps everyone out'

This very angry looking toad was just one of several potentially new species uncovered during our trip.

Having a viscous mass murdering terrorist group with a penchant for kidnap hiding out in the forest is almost as effective as a liberal sprinkling of landmines. Alonso explains, ‘If the FARC occupy the forest then it’s forbidden to cut down trees or kill animals. Not for conservation reasons, but because they don’t like people removing their cover or wandering about with guns’

One herpetologist even went so far as to name a new species of toad, Atelopus farci, stating that ‘the species is dedicated to the FARC for its conservation, but not political, efforts’. Ten years later however, he was held captive by a rival group, whilst surveying for new species in their territory. Perhaps they were annoyed they didn’t have a toady mascot they could call their own. He was released safely but probably wishes he’d never started the name game. Now everyone’s going to want one.

Glass frog photo by Robin Moore

The FARC’s presence may inadvertently protect the forest they occupy, but their involvement in the drug trade means they’re unlikely to be sharing the podium with Al Gore anytime soon. The destruction of the rainforest to grow coca is public enemy number one for Colombia’s wildlife, destroying an estimated 3000sqkm of precious primary forest every year. To add insult to injury their favourite place to grow the stuff is in the National Parks. Cultivating on public land conveniently does away with any irksome finger pointing at landowners. Warriors they may be, but eco-warriors they’re not.

It’s hard to choose, but my favourite frog of the day is a splendid Harlequin poison dart frog, a threatened species found only in the lowlands of Colombia. Ironically the presence of the FARC shielded this animal from an increasing threat to frogs and a known threat to humans - kidnap.

The new morph of Harlequin Dart frog has a 'don't mess with me' look about him

The last few years have seen an explosion in a rather peculiar fashion for keeping frogs as pets. This in turn is fuelling a booming multi-million dollar illegal trade. Most popular are poison dart frogs who come in a kaleidoscope of colour combinations. These have evolved to ward off predators by warning of their toxicity but ironically have the opposite effect on fanatic frog-fanciers, who like to collect them like stamps. The rarer the better.

Robin tells me, ‘Many of these species inhabit very small ranges. After habitat destruction and disease, poaching is probably the biggest threat they face, enough to drive small populations to extinction.’

Even evolution makes mistakes: this frogs resemblance to a certain flag could be its downfall

Proving there’s no such thing as intelligent design, one morph has inadvertently evolved a perfect red circle in the middle of its back. This makes it the target of Japanese collectors keen to possess a frog that sports a facsimile of their flag. Our dart frog is jet black with yellow spots, a never-seen-before morph. As such it could fetch thousands of dollars on the black market.

According to Alonso’s investigation the local Embera Indians, who once used these animals to poison their arrows, are at the bottom of the chain in this market and paid as little as one dollar a frog. The dons of the frog-smuggling world it turns out are the Germans whose desire to be the first at everything even extends to frog collecting. Their methods of achieving this are, in my opinion, reasonable grounds for WW3.

The local Embera women were captivating in their fancy dresses

Most are carried out in cargos of tropical fish, but small time smugglers are known to resort to kinkier methods; stuffing frogs into film canisters and clearing customs with them strapped to their thighs. Or even shoved where the sun doesn’t shine. Ouch. All of which makes you wonder how one would explain away a severe case of croaking. Let alone deal with an escapee poison dart frog, heading north.

Our Harlequin dart frog risks being snatched not just for its good looks but also its secret stash of drugs. Alonso’s most shocking discovery is a second, more organised ring of frog-nappers supplying the pharmaceutical industry.

The first frog we found was this male Andean Poison dart frog seen here carrying a tadpole on its back. They are dedicated parents and do not breed explosively like other species making them especially vulnerable to collection pressures. Photo by Robin Moore

Amphibian skin harbours a pharmacopoeia of chemicals that could provide cures for everything from cancer to AIDS. Our Harlequin poison dart frog for example is known to secrete a toxin that blocks neurotransmission and could play a role in treating Alzheimers. A new morph like this could contain the chemical blueprints for dozens of other medicines.

One of the problems faced by the pharma companies is that the frogs don’t synthesise the poisons themselves. Like little bio-prospectors they sequester them from their diet of ants, termites and beetles. So captive bred animals are no use to scientists, whose research can burn through hundreds of frogs. To isolate epibatadine, a painkiller two hundred times stronger than morphine, took over seven hundred Phantasmal dart frogs. It’s perhaps no coincidence this species is listed as endangered.

It strikes me that this is a perfect example of the value of biodiversity. This invisible interconnectedness puts a price tag on preserving the entire web of life. Even the termites.

It wasn't all frogs - this chrysalis was rather beautiful too

Quevedo is keen to buy up private land from farmers and establish reserves complete with guards, to protect Colombia’s biological treasure trove. He has created eighteen so far in other parts of the country and is looking for funding to start protecting the Choco. But it is a race against the clock. The streams that we are surveying for natural riches are also being eyed up by gold prospectors. Experts are predicting that Colombia could be the scene of the last great global gold rush, attracting 4.5 billion worth if investment from international mining companies over the next 10 years. Now that Choco is becoming safer, its vast deposits of alluvial gold can finally be exploited annihilating our amphibian El Dorado in the process.

‘These are not romantic gold miners going in with pans. To get the alluvial deposits requires huge machinery. Sucking up everything and dumping tons of mercury into the water’ Paul tells me, ‘Conservationists have to move faster than we’ve ever moved before or the whole area will be razed in ten to fifteen years’

It’s a twisted world in which the greatest threat to biodiversity is peace. But it’s perhaps even more perverse when you consider the economics of the situation.

The cost of conserving a slice of this pristine forest, containing what is perhaps the greatest concentration of unique biodiversity on the planet, is a laughable one hundred pounds a hectare. The real value of this land in terms of its role in purifying the water, recycling carbon and as a potential source of bio-chemicals is something we’re just beginning to quantify.

But with an international drug war being fought on its doorstep, the Colombian government is focussed on restoring peace and attracting foreign investment and not conservation. This means that Quevedo has to look to international NGOs for support. There are a handful of international charities dedicated to saving frogs like Amphibian Ark but according to Robin Moore, ‘getting donors for amphibian conservation is harder than finding the Mesopotamian beaked toad’.

Which is saying something. At the end of our three-day toad hunt our primary quarry has sadly eluded us. I like to think he was sitting in a tree looking down and laughing at us. Not missing presumed dead. Robin’s consolation is the discovery of a different species of beaked toad, which he believes may be new to science. This joins a handful of potential new species including one found by me.

This little film captures the moment I caught my first frog of the trip which just happened to be a potential new species

My herpetological holy grail is a little rocket frog. These tend to your classic little brown jobs: dowdy and unassuming. But my one has bright scarlet legs like he’s wearing red drainpipes. What a dude. It’s unlikely he’ll be called the Lucy frog though. Auctioning off scientific names has become a valuable money-spinner for conservation organisations. Which is fine by me. I’ll happily trade my amphibian immortality to ensure he’s still here in a hundred years time.

To support Pro Aves mission to conserve the Choco you can find out more about them and donate here

This blog post first appeared as a feature in the Saturday Telegraph magazine and can be read online here

05/01/2010

My amphibian adventure is about to go totally sci-fi. I’m
going to witness the future of frog-kind and it’s like the plot of a bad B movie;
featuring other-worldly amphibians, a space age frog pod, a killer fungus and a bunch of fiendish smugglers with frogs up their bums.

This post has got it all, including alien frog sex (complete with kamikaze flies)

I’m in Panama, which is quite a shock after Colombia’s
raw Latino charm. First up they use US dollars as their currency, which is a
bit of an eye opener. The drive from the airport reveals a capital city with a
skyline straight out of Miami Vice. I’m told by my taxi driver, who speaks to
me in perfect American, that Panama city aspires to be the Dubai of Central
America. Oh. Dear. I hated Dubai. A city of transitory superlatives, full of
wanton souls acting out hollow lives in a Disneyland of western consumption. My
heart sinks.

The buses in Panama are cool, in a sweaty way

I’m plopped out of the cab into some bland suburb of pastel
coloured high-rise condos resplendent with gun-toting door men. My hostel is an
ugly modern house with what looks like an ashtray for a garden, just around the
corner from a 4-lane highway and a supermarket the size of an airport. I feel a
long way from the frogs.

But I’m not hanging about. I’m heading into the Panamanian highlands on a mission to visit EVACC – a space age amphibian evacuation centre nestled in the heart of an extinct volcanic crater.

EVACC: A terrifying vision of the future where frogs survive in sterile pods and crocs are mandatory footwear.

It all sounds very Moonraker, so I’m half expecting Jaws and
his pigtailed girlfriend to greet me off the bus. Instead, I’m met by the very
wonderful Edgardo Griffith and his lovely wife Heidi - the original frog Samaritans.

Edgardo checks on his babies - each tank has temperature, light, moisture and ph monitored to suit the frog's needs.

Back in 2004 the deadly Chytrid fungus was steadily creeping south through Central America, killing thousands of frogs. Aware of what would happen when it hit Panama a team of pioneering frog scientists hatched a controversial plan to conduct the world’s first frog swoop. The idea was to mount a massive rescue operation to scoop up enough specimens ahead of the advancing fungal wave to create an amphibian ark.

The El Valle Amphibian Conservation Centre now supports over fifteen utterly unique species which thanks to the fungus, can no longer live outside this sterilised building. One of the key species they wanted to save was the awesome golden frog.

The rather poorly named golden frog is neither gold nor a
frog but a terribly polite yellow toad, which likes to wave at other yellow
toads it sees down by the stream. The theory is that streams are noisy places
and the waving beats croaking over the din of running water in order to get
laid or pick a fight. You can watch the absurdly hilarious sight of toad semaphore
in the Attenborough clip below. It's brilliant.

Somewhat ironically for an animal that’s now extinct in the wild, the golden frog has always been a symbol of good luck. It’s the countries number one national treasure – the Panamanian equivalent of the panda. Rather like the Queen, the golden frog can be found looking mildly annoyed and waving at you from stamps, tea towels and other tourist trinkets.

Love the car - Edgardo and Heidi drive a golden frog rana-mobile...not sure if it waves politely but it's perfect for the Avenger

..they even have a rana-loo. Just the place to have a lucky poo.

But fame has been this frog’s final undoing. Any golden frogs that survived the fungus were swiped from streams by illegal frog nappers and sold to fanatic collectors for up to $5000 a pair.

The illegal trade in frogs is a booming multi-million dollar industry that's making a significant dent in wild populations of many rare amphibians. For some strange reason amphibians have no official status and are lumped together with fish - a small legal detail which makes them easy to smuggle through customs amongst cargo of tropical fish.

Proving that even evolution makes mistakes - these Colombian dart frogs have inadvertently evolved a facsimile of the Japanese flag in their backs, making them highly sort after by Japanese collectors.

My sources tell me they’ve even heard of small time smugglers adopting an altogether kinkier approach - strapping frogs to their thighs or sticking them in tubes and smuggling them through customs up their bums. All of which makes you wonder how one would explain away a
severe case of croaking or deal with an escapee poison dart frog heading north. It seems hard to believe.

But it's true. Earlier this year Hans Kurt Kubus was busted in New Zealand with no less than 44 lizards in his pants. And one very frightened trouser snake.

Conforming perfectly to national stereotypes, the dons of the frog smuggling world are in fact the Germans whose desire to be the first at everything even extends to frog collecting. Many of the world’s rarest amphibians end up being traded under the table at a
huge herpetology fair in Germany, which is presumably crawling with Teutonic types with with herps in their pants.

Edgardo takes me on a hike to explore the cloud forests surrounding El Valle.
They look like a fantasyland for frogs, full of crystal clear streams and huge trees
dripping with moss and bromeliads. But it's eerily silent – we hear just the one solitary frog calling during our walk.
He tells me that the fungus wiped out 80% of the hundred or so species found here, many of which were found nowhere else on earth.

These frogs will not be able to return to their natural home until some clever scientist finds a cure for Chytrid. In the meantime the food chain is responding to the missing frogs - zoologists have already recorded the disappearance of some species of amphibian-eating snakes.

The forest of El Valle looks completely normal but is strangely silent

But there will be no point in finding a cure for the fungus if the cloud forests no longer exist. In a bizarre final twist to this
story, the frogs are being replaced by another animal waiting to croak - US
retirees. The Panamanian highlands are being sold off as a cheap place for
Americans waiting to die - with acres of cloud forest being destroyed to create gated
developments and golf courses. A sterilised version of nature suitable for American pensioners.

The frogs at EVACC are extremely pampered - katydids have their powerful mandibles and spiky feet removed so they can't cause any damage when being hand fed to the frogs

There is no denying that EVACC is a similarly strange place for frogs - a vision of a future where frogs exist only in sterile life support machines. But without Edgar and Heidi and EVACC these animals wouldn't
exist at all.

I feel incredibly privileged to be able to
hang out at EVACC. In fact I've chosen to spend my birthday cleaning poop out of tanks and feeding the frogs so that I can spend some quality time watching these amazing animals.

A juvenile Hemiphractus fasciatus, born at the centre

But my best birthday present is the arrival of a
freshly metamorphosed golden froglet, which will share my birthday and is named
after me. I am super chuffed for so many reasons.

Lucy's birthday golden frog

EVACC may not look like a cloud forest but Heidi and Edgardo's extraordinary efforts to mimic nature in a plastic tank are clearly paying off. The frogs are not just surviving, but breeding like crazy. If all of EVACC’s bumper crop of golden
frog tadpoles turn into toads they won’t know what to do with them all.

Which makes me wonder if Edgar and Heidi were allowed to sell off the spare frogs then perhaps they could help fund their conservation. And perhaps even prevent them from being stuck up German's bums. Well maybe.

04/12/2010

I’ve been hijacked by Colombia. I’m meant to be in Panama by
now, but I’ve just postponed my flight for the third time in three weeks. I’m
being held captive by this country and its exotic charms. I’ll never make it
home at this rate.

I never even meant to come to here. I wanted to, but to be
completely honest I was scared. I was worried that I’d be spiked with Burandanga
- the freaky local backstreet drug that’s made from the Datura plant, which
removes your free will and turns into a self-robbing zombie. In fact all I had
to worry about was being invited to lick poison dart frogs with a nutty
professor. How could I have been so ignorant?

Military man outside the halls of justice in Bogota. The ants are an art installation and represent Colombia's millions of refugees - the human cost of cocaine in this country.

I came because I got an email from a frog scientist who’d
been reading my blog and invited me to Bogota to check out the work he and his
colleagues are doing. It was an exceedingly random offer, but these days I’m
really into random. I like the idea that the frogs are guiding my path, taking
me away from the well-worn South American gringo trail and the same old travel
decisions I’ve made for years. I’m handing my destiny over to the little
green guys. So I said yes.

No room for Superman - public phone Bogota-style

It turns out that frogs make pretty good travel agents. Far
from being the post apocalyptic urban hell-hole I had in mind, Bogota rocks.
It’s the coolest city I’ve been to in years and really no more edgy than many
other South American capitals.

It kind of reminds me of a Latino version of New York 20
years ago – pulsating with energy and an eclectic culture featuring great live
music, world class museums, funky flea markets, kooky hole-in-the-wall bars and some seriously dodgy
neighbourhoods rubbing up against super chic uptown restaurants and clubs. Oh and great people,
who are also unbelievably welcoming. So, not that much like New York, then.

Snappy dressing knows no age limit in this town.

Colombia has tons of really amazing frogs too. Nearly eight hundred different species. In fact, if it wasn’t for Brazil (which has a few more species but
is, after all, massive) it would be the amphibian capital of the world. And those
are just the ones they know about - there are hundreds of species that have yet
to be discovered in jungles that continue to be no-go areas thanks to decades of civil war.

Look into my eyes...one of Colombia's many mesmerising amphibians

The frog scientist who invited me
– Dr Andrew Crawford – is part of a crack Colombian frog squad. They’re like
the amphibian A team, battling away on the fungus fighting frontline. The
deadly Chytrid fungus is invading this country
from three different entry points. If someone doesn’t find a way to save the
frogs fast then up to eighty percent of the species could go extinct in the higher
altitudes favoured by the fungus - a devastating loss to global amphibian biodiversity.

But I believe in Andrew and his team. Not just because he’s passionate, dedicated and super smart but mostly because he looks just like Brains from Thunderbirds. And Thunderbirds always win.

BrainsBigger brains

Andrew’s lovely wife Vicky is
tasked with getting to know the enemy by cultivating Chytrid in the lab. Ironically for a fungus that is
seemingly unstoppable in the wild, Chytrid is remarkably hard to culture. After 15 months of trial and error
Vicky and her colleague Edgar behave like proud parents that have survived IVF and refer to their first precious culture as
their baby, and spoil it rotten. I made this short video of baby taking its first steps.

The large round circles are the
fungal bodies, these imbed themselves in the frog’s skin cells and then the small mobile spores erupt out of them, ready to grow more fungus. It looks so innocuous but is an alarming efficient frog killing system.

They are also searching for a potential foil to the fungus
and are particularly interested in the skin of a population of Atelopus toads that
have Chytrid but haven't died from it.
By culturing the skin scrapings of these toads they hope to discover some
frog-friendly bacteria that's providing them with their immunity.

Above the clouds...the remote and beautiful "lost city"

I’m taking a break from the capital to make the five-day
trek, high up into the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern Colombia to visit
the “lost city”, which sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie and
has the looks and story to match.This ancient city, home to the pre-Inka Tayrona people, was abandoned during the Spanish conquest and “lost” for centuries until a couple of Colombian treasure hunters stumbled upon it in the early 1970’s.

At the time, the area was a prime spot for the cultivation of
Santa Marta Gold – a particularly strong strain of marijuana.The grave robbers must have thought they’d smoked
too much when they discovered this Eldorado - half consumed by
the jungle and stuffed with gold. But in the end their greed was over-powering and they killed each
other, and many others also died during the subsequent looting of its treasures.

The trek features amazing scenery and competitively priced wildlife

It’s an incredible hike, gruelling and beautiful in equal
measures, up and down steep mountain paths, through pristine jungle and wading waste deep through crystal
clear rivers, which I only hope are still Chytrid
free. At least it sounds as if the frogs here are alive and well – we are
serenaded each night in our hammocks by a cacophony of amorous amphibians including the deafening whoop-whoop of the smoky jungle frog.

The smoky jungle frog is a big meaty brute - I had to stop our camp cook turning this one into dinner.

Until a few years ago this area was used to cultivate
coca and process cocaine paste. Now the local farmers are subsidised to grow
cacao instead. But that primary rainforest is gone forever and with cocaine
consumption and production on the up, the coca farmers have probably just
moved deeper into the mountains to tear down and poison yet more pristine
jungle. Colombia has a significant portion of the Amazon and the destruction of
rainforest to cultivate illegal crops is a significant environmental issue. In fact
it's been estimated that every gram of coke implies the destruction of 4 sq
metres of rainforest. A sobering thought indeed.

The one Kogi man who'd let me take his photo - seen clutching his poporu, which contains the lime they add to the coca leaves they chew.

As we huff and puff our way up the mountain, we are
frequently passed by ethereal figures clad in white, making light work of these
brutal jungle paths. These are the Kogi Indians – the direct descendents of the
Tayrona - whose culture has remained miraculously intact given their proximity
to “civilisation”. I’m fascinated by them and keen to converse but they’re having
none of it. Their disdain for me is palpable.

Kogi women outside their village

But who can blame them –
from conquistadores to greedy grave robbers, pot growers and coca farmers to armed
guerrillas, outsiders haven’t exactly put on a particularly favourable show to these
people. Our guide tells me that the Kogi refer to themselves as
“Elder brother” and everyone else as “Little brother”. They believe that little
brother is young and foolish and destroying the planet. No arguing with that.

Buried deep in the jungle, twelve hundred moss covered steps lead to
the "lost city". We climb up to the top, where the chiefs would have lived and are surrounded by clouds. It
really is like something out of Indiana Jones. Totally magical.

But what really blows me away is that there, at the very top and in the spiritual centre of the city, is a giant rock
shaped to look like a frog. Apparently frogs, like all nature, were highly revered and
a potent symbol of fertility – the essence of life. The Tayrona, it seems, put
frogs at the very centre of their world.

I had no idea and like the big superstitious frog freak that I am, I thank the little green guys for bringing me here to show me this amazing place.

Home at last - me and the big frog

As I descend back into the jungle I become pensive, unable to ignore the irony that western scientists also saw a link between frogs and fertility. But instead of building statues and worshipping them, we injected them with urine to find out if women were pregnant.

The twenty year mass export of African clawed toads for use as pregnancy tests is now widely considered to be the way that Chytrid has spread around the planet. Thanks to this bizarre tale of human folly, this frog statue could be the only frog left standing in these forests in a few years time. The Kogi may not want to talk to us, but perhaps we should have listened to them and their ancestors rather than stealing from them.

I leave you with the only frog that has ever come close to being the centre of our world, singing a strangely prescient song. Take it away Kermit....